Ekaterina Gubanova

The Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova initially studied piano and choral conducting before concentrating on voice at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in her native Moscow; she then continued her studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. In 2002 she was accepted into the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House in London, and in 2005 came her international career breakthrough when she sang Brangäne in Wagner’s Tristan at the Opéra National de Paris. This part became a signature role: Gubanova has since performed Brangäne at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, and in Berlin, Munich, Madrid, Valencia, Rotterdam, and Tokyo. She has also appeared as Fricka in Der Ring des Nibelungen in a new production co-presented at the Berlin Staatsoper and at La Scala in Milan. Gubanova is equally at home in the Italian, French, and Russian repertoire. She has sung Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlo at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg and Olga in Eugene Onegin at the Salzburg Festival; at the Metropolitan Opera she has appeared as Giulietta in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann and Giovanna Seymour in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena; and she made her Bavarian Staatsoper debut as Amneris in Aida. Upcoming engagements for the 2014-15 season include Adalgisa (Bellini’s Norma) in Barcelona and Munich as well as Eboli at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Ekaterina Gubanova’s concert repertoire includes such works as Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Verdi’s Requiem, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, and Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. Among her regular conducting partners are Daniel Barenboim, Semyon Bychkov, Valery Gergiev, Riccardo Muti, Kent Nagano, and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

August 2014